All the Shit that Fits…

Dawn Marvin likes to be introduced as a fighter of over 20 years for women’s rights. She does not like to be introduced as Randall Terry’s aunt, which she protests is just an accident of birth. She stands, however, as evidence that Mr. Terry’s psychoses are not shared by all of his blood relatives. At the counter-demonstrations to Operation Rescue’s Buffalo extravaganza this summer, she told how another of Terry’s aunts almost died as the result of a botched illegal abortion. Marvin recalled herself as a pregnant teenager forced into a “shotgun wedding”: she endured four years of beatings by her husband before leaving him. She describes her nephew as a rich “white kid from the suburbs who didn’t have a clue as to the lives of the women in his own family.” She concluded that he’s no more aware of other women’s lives today. [this info plagiarized from Workers World, subscription $15 annually, 46 W. 21 St., New York 10010].

You say don’t fuck — we say fuck you! [chant heard in Buffalo]

What’s the difference between Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown?

Murphy Brown will be back in the Fall.

A proposed equal rights amendment to the Iowa state constitution is part of a “feminist agenda” which is “a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

— Pat Robertson

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At one point during the Iran-Contra hearings, representative Jack Brooks (D-TX) tried to explore North’s role in Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA- a sub-agency of the National Security Administration) guidelines which called for suspension of the Constitution, dissolution of the Congress, replacement of civil courts with military courts, and detention of political dissidents during a declared state of national emergency. Under the plan, all political authority would be consolidated in the hands of the President and his military advisers. Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-HA), angrily disallowed Brooks’s line of questioning, as indicated in transcripts of the hearings:

Brooks: Colonel North, in your work at the N.S.C. were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?

Brendan Sullivan [North’s counsel]: Mr. Chairman?

Inouye: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch upon that?

Brooks: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed, by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was an area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation.

Inouye: May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I’m certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.”

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Students at the University of Oregon have established a not-for-profit organization intended to enable voters to cast informed votes in elections at all levels: national, state and local. “VOTE SMART”, staffed by about 75 student volunteers, stores information on the positions of all candidates on various issues: one can call any time of the day or night for information on any candidate for public office. The service is free; if the information requested is unavailable, staffers will call the candidate in question to determine her stance on the particular issue, and then inform by phone the person who made the inquiry.

Staffers report that the biggest problem they have faced so far is the reluctance of various Republican officials to respond to phone calls: officials often either hung up or failed to return calls.

“VOTE SMART”: 1-800-786-6885; c/o Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97330.

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Ronald Reagan cut a deal with Iran before the 1980 election to send arms in exchange for Iran’s agreeing to delay the release of our 52 hostages.

— Barbara Honegar, former White House Policy Analyst under Reagan and a member of Bush’s 1980 election campaign staff

More precisely, in order to insure a victory over Carter, George Bush negotiated to keep the hostages in Iran. The campaign was worried about an “October Surprise” which might swing the election. They promised arms shipments to the Iranian government in exchange for promises that the hostages would not be released until afterwards. George Bush attended two meetings with representatives of the Khomeini government in October, 1980, one in Washington and one in Paris. Also in attendance at those meetings, according to Iranian intelligence reports, were: Richard Allen, who became Reagan’s first National Security adviser; Donald Gregg, who became Bush’s National Security adviser and later his Chief of Staff; and Albert Hakim and Menacher Golamfora, arms dealers who would be named as middlemen in the Iran-Contra dealings. The Americans delivered millions of dollars at these meetings to seal the deal.

The charge was first made public by Honegar, and later corroborated by Abul-Hossein Bani-Sadr, President of Iran in 1980. Bani-Sadr confirms both the meetings and Bush’s involvement. The bills of sale and other documents confirming the arms shipments to Iran in March of 1981 (not 1985, as the Iran-Contra hearings would indicate) are a matter of public record, although the media in the US has been less than interested.

In These Times broke the story in the summer of 1987; The Village Voice and Rolling Stone followed it up. A video, Cover-Up, was shown nationally during the months preceding the 1988 election (and is still available through the Alternative Orange ). In early 1988, In These Times contacted ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, the New York Times, Washington Post, and the LA Times-Mirror asking that somebody cover the story. All of these organizations refused: the only reason given by any was that the story was “unnewsworthy.” This was where the Iran-Contra scandal really began. The release of the hostages was even timed to coincide with Reagan’s inauguration: they were released just minutes after Reagan was sworn in on January 21, 1980. In fact, due to an unforeseen delay in the completion of the inauguration ceremonies, the boarding of the hostages onto the airplane in Teheran was also delayed.

In any other country it would have been called a coup. And they seem to have gotten away with it.

— Marilyn Clements, Center for Constitutional Rights

Bush’s CIA contacts have been crucial to the illegal overthrow of two governments: the US and Nicaragua. When Eugene Hasenfus was shot down over Nicaragua in October 1986, his CIA superiors were of course somewhat worried lest he betray any information to the press about the ongoing terrorist campaign against the Nicaraguan people. Therefore, CIA operative Felix Rodriguez made an emergency call to his superiors. Specifically, Rodriguez called Vice President George Bush’s office. He reported the bad news to Donald Gregg, and the spin control was underway. That Rodriguez would call try to call Bush first is not surprising: the two have worked together on CIA projects since at least 1975. In fact, the C-130 cargo plane in which Hasenfus was shot down was the same one used in 1984 by Barry Seal, a convicted drug dealer turned informant who was working closely at the time with the Vice President’s anti-drug task force. The CIA installed a hidden camera in the plane and Seal took a blurry photo purportedly showing himself with Federico Vaughn, a high-level Nicaraguan official, and a Colombian drug czar, unloading bags of cocaine on a Nicaraguan airstrip. The photo was leaked to the press in July, 1984, over the objections of the Drug Enforcement Agency, who knew that its release would undermine their ongoing probe of Colombian drug kingpins — since the “Colombian drug czar” in the photo was actually a DEA undercover informant, whose cover was blown upon the photo’s publication. The major media dutifully published the photo, and Reagan displayed it in a nationally televised speech in March, 1986. The DEA case against the Colombian drug cartel was undermined, but the propaganda campaign against the Sandinista government thrived. Hearings of the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime in 1988 would reveal that Vaughn, the supposed Sandinista, was also a US intelligence employee, and would indicate that the accusations of Sandinista drug-running were US intelligence fabrications. Once again, the media showed little interest in the information.

Much of the above comes from the diaries of Col. Oliver North. When on trial for Iran- Contra transgressions, he threatened to have his lawyer subpoena all administration officials who had been involved in the arms sales to Iran and in the diversion of profits from those sales to the contra’s. George Bush warned that such a move would threaten national security: it certainly would have threatened his.

Interested parties might wish to investigate House Resolution 34, introduced by Representative Henry Gonzales. The Resolution calls for the impeachment of President Bush. While we would certainly endorse such a move, it might be simpler were our resident war criminal simply to lose the election.